Travels in Time: Drabbles and Short Scenes
by phantomlistener
Summary: A collection of short/very short pieces; various Doctors, various companions, various eras.
1. The Waiting Game: Sarah Jane Smith

Time doesn't quite mean the same thing when you're travelling with the Doctor. Coming home and having to deal with calendars and deadlines when you're used to stepping out in to different times feels so wrong.

In the first few months after my return I felt so out of place. It was as if everything that used to be important had been buried by the sheer magnitude of my travels with the Doctor, everything I did seeming dull and lifeless compared to the things I'd done before.

I hoped he'd come back.

I waited for him but he never came.


	2. Misapprehensions: The Tenth Doctor

People assume he's the eternal hero, always waiting somewhere out there to save the next innocent victim.

They never think, for one moment, that maybe he's running – and even if they did they'd probably assume that he was trying to escape the devastation of his planet and all that meant for him.

Even his people thought he just wanted adventure. They never thought that maybe he'd been running from the start, ever since he first stepped in to his stolen TARDIS and flung the destination lever in a universal game of chance.

The question is, running away or running towards?


	3. Part Exchange: Donna Noble

Mine. He's mine, and I dare the Universe - all the bloody universes - to take him away from me because I'm telling you now there isn't a thing on Earth that would convince me to be anywhere else, with anyone else. When I look at him, I see everything that's good in this world, but I see something else as well: I see a lost little boy who goes round saving the world on a daily basis because he thinks it might, one day, make up for the world he couldn't save. I see a man who carries pain around with him like a dark cloud on the horizon.

But where's the fun in that?

Sometimes, he needs someone to remind him that the pain isn't all there is. And I remember the first time I told him that he needed someone to stop him going too far - well, he's gone too far with me many a time, and I'm not complaining! - but that's not quite true. Cos he's better than that. So much better.

What I give him is the softer side of human life - love and friendship - and in return he's given me the Universe. It's not really a fair exchange, is it? Maybe one day I'll pay up, but for now I'm quite happy to be Donna Noble, best temp in Chiswick, travelling space with her spaceman. Cos while he's showing me the Universe, I'm showing him the bit the Universe seems to leave out.

The soft bit.


	4. Icarus: The Tenth Doctor

"It's not fair!"

The moment the words were out of his mouth, he knew he'd gone too far. Or would go too far... Time was becoming confused.

But it wasn't until he felt the lethal radiation flooding his body, felt the entirety of his essence slowly ignite, that the realistation hit him.

He hadn't just defied the Universe. In saving Adelaide Brooks, in believing himself the 'Timelord Victorious', he'd become everything that his previous incarnations had rebelled against and run from. That Gallifreyan pride and blindness had taken root in his soul and festered, untameable, the last, lonely remnant of his planet buried deep inside his psyche.

And it had steered him too close to the sun, so that now his wings burned, hot and painful.

Rebirth in fire.

He held off regeneration as long as he could, seeing only too late the possibilities and things that could have been. His wings were melting, burning, and he at once longed for and feared the cool sparkling seabeneath him. He didn't want to go, and yet these vestiges of Gallifrey would go with him.

No more 'Timelord victorious': Icarus would burn.

As he should.


	5. Home: Tegan Jovanka

Why oh why oh why couldn't the Doctor pilot his own bloody spaceship? Was it too much to ask that he returned her to the right time and the right place, prefereably before she turned 90 and was too old to walk, let alone be an air stewardess?

She wore her uniform as armour, partly to keep other people out and partly to keep her hope in. After all, hadn't her Auntie Vanessa always said to 'Never give up hope.'?

Okay, so she'd been killed and shrunk to the size of a small doll, but Tegan tried not to think about that.

Yet another reason fot the uniform. At least it didn't change, and she could pretend that in some small way everything was okay.

Oh, she didn't mean to get quite so annoyed with the Doctor when he managed yet another outer-space navigational error, but it had become a habit. Her anger was as much of a shield as the uniform, in a way,

And so every time the Tardis materialised, half of her was relieved to see another alien world on the viewscreen, and the other half desperately wished it would show her Heathrow Airport, England, Earth, in 1981.


	6. His: Any Doctor post10

There were some people he always thought of with a sense of possession, companions who'd managed to worm their way further in to his affections than others. They were the ones he hated and loved seeing: never sure whether to avoid them and avoid the painful reminder of their mayfly lives, or treasure every moment as best he could.

There was his Sarah, living her own life; his Jo, who he'd never yet dared to watch grow up; his Romana, lost to Time; and his Rose, lost but alive. There were more of them - never forgotten, never abandoned. His.


	7. Look Before You Leap: Liz Shaw,Brigadier

"Brigadier, would you mind-"

"Sorry, Miss Shaw, I can't quite-"

Liz sighed and squeezed herself tighter against the cupboard wall, trying to avoid as much of his body pressed against hers as she could. "Couldn't you find anywhere more spacious to hide?" she whispered finally.

"There was hardly time to check what was through the doors. I thought it was a room."

She laughed softly. "So... how long are we going to be stuck here?"

"Hopefully they'll be gone in a few minutes."

"Good. Sorry... can you just-"

"Keep still!"

"Sorry, Brigadier." She giggled. "Got a problem?"

He sighed. "No..."


End file.
